Muscat: Global investment in renewable energy and energy-smart technologies reached $333.5 billion last year, up 3 per cent from a revised $324.6 billion in 2016, and only 7 per cent short of the record figure of $360.3 billion, reached in 2015.

This extraordinary boom in photovoltaic (PV) installations made 2017 a record year for China’s investment in clean energy and over-shadowed changes elsewhere, including jumps in investment in Australia and Mexico, and declines in Japan, the UK and Germany, according to annual figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), based on its world-leading database of projects and deals.

“The 2017 total is all the more remarkable when you consider that capital costs for the leading technology — solar — continue to fall sharply. Typical utility-scale PV systems were about 25 per cent cheaper per megawatt last year than they were two years earlier,” Jon Moore, chief executive of BNEF, said.

Solar investment globally amounted to $160.8 billion in 2017, up 18 per cent on the previous year despite these cost reductions. Just over half of that world total, or $86.5 billion, was spent in China. This was 58 per cent higher than in 2016, with an estimated 53GW of PV capacity installed — up from 30GW in 2016.

“China installed about 20GW more solar capacity in 2017 than we forecast. This happened for two main reasons: first, despite a growing subsidy burden and worsening power curtailment, China's regulators, under pressure from the industry, were slow to curb build of utility-scale projects outside allocated government quotas. Developers of these projects are assuming they will be allocated subsidy in future years,” Justin Wu, head of Asia-Pacific for BNEF, said.

“Second, the cost of solar continues to fall in China, and more projects are being deployed on rooftops, in industrial parks or at other distributed locales. These systems are not limited by the government quota. Large energy consumers in China are now installing solar panels to meet their own demand, with a minimal premium subsidy,” he added.

Investment by country

Overall, Chinese investment in all the clean energy technologies was $132.6 billion, up 24 per cent setting a new record. The next biggest investing country was the US, at $56.9 billion, up 1 per cent on 2016 despite the less friendly tone towards renewables adopted by the Trump administration.

Large wind and solar project financings pushed Australia up 150 per cent to a record $9 billion, and Mexico up 516 per cent to $6.2 billion. On the downside, Japan saw investment decline by 16 per cent in 2017, to $23.4 billion, while Germany slipped 26 per cent to $14.6 billion and the UK 56 per cent to $10.3 billion in the face of changes in policy support. Europe as a whole invested $57.4 billion, down 26 per cent year-on-year.

Investment by sector

Solar led the way, as mentioned above, attracting $160.8 billion — equivalent to 48 per cent of the global total for all of clean energy investment. The two biggest solar projects of all to get the go-ahead last year were both in the United Arab Emirates: the 1.2GW Marubeni JinkoSolar and Adwea Sweihan plant, at $899 million, and the 800MW Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum III installation, at an estimated $968 million.

Wind was the second-biggest sector for investment in 2017, at $107.2 billion. This was down 12 per cent on 2016 levels, but there were record-breaking projects financed both onshore and offshore. Onshore, American Electric Power said it would back the 2GW Oklahoma Wind Catcher project in the US, at $2.9 billion excluding transmission. Offshore, Ørsted said it had reached ‘final investment decision’ on the 1.4GW Hornsea 2 project in the UK North Sea, at an estimated $4.8 billion. There were also 13 Chinese offshore wind projects financed last year, with total capacity of 3.7GW, and estimated investment of $10.8 billion.

The third-biggest sector was energy-smart technologies, where asset finance of smart meters and battery storage, and equity-raising by specialist companies in smart grid, efficiency, storage and electric vehicles, reached $48.8 billion in 2017, up 7 per cent on the previous year and the highest ever.

The remaining sectors lagged far behind, with biomass and waste-to-energy down 36 per cent at $4.7 billion, biofuels down 3 per cent at $2 billion, small hydro 14 per cent lower at $3.4 billion, low-carbon services 4 per cent down at $4.8 billion, geothermal down 34 per cent at $1.6 billion, and marine energy down 14 per cent at just $156 million.

The clean energy investment total excludes hydro-electric projects of more than 50MW. However, for comparison, final investment decisions in large hydro are likely to have been worth $40-50 billion in 2017.

BNEF’s preliminary estimates are that a record 160GW of clean energy generating capacity (excluding large hydro) were commissioned in 2017, with solar providing 98GW of that, wind 56GW, biomass and waste-to-energy 3GW, small hydro 2.7GW, geothermal 700MW and marine less than 10MW.

Investment by category

Breaking the investment total down by type of deal, the dominant category — as always — was asset finance of utility-scale renewable energy projects of more than 1MW. This was $216.1 billion in 2017, up fractionally on the previous year. Small-scale projects of less than 1MW (effectively small solar systems) attracted $49.4 billion, up 15 per cent — thanks in large part to the installation rush in China.

Equity-raising by specialist clean energy companies on public markets totaled $8.7 billion in 2017, down 26 per cent. The biggest transactions in this category were a $978 million convertible issue by electric car maker Tesla, and a $545 million placement by Guodian Nanjing Automation, a Chinese technology supplier to generating and transmission plants.

Venture capital and private equity investment in clean energy came to $4.1 billion in 2017, down 38% on the previous year and the lowest figure since 2005. The biggest deals were a $400 million Series A round for Microvast Power System, a Chinese maker of electric vehicle technology, and a $155 million expansion capital round for Greenko Energy Holdings, an Indian wind project developer.

Asset finance of energy-smart technologies was $21.6 billion, up 36 per cent thanks to increased installation of smart meters and lithium-ion batteries for energy storage. Corporate research and development into clean energy rose 11 per cent to $22.1 billion, and government R&D was almost level at $14.5 billion.